BOOKS OF THE TIMES

BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Gliding Through Europe, Cloaked in Diffident Charm

By JANET MASLIN

Published: August 22, 2002

BLOOD OF VICTORY

By Alan Furst

237 pages. Random House. $24.95.

There is a kind of man who meets a woman on an ocean voyage and winds up having a shipboard romance. Then there is the man to whom this happens: a barefoot woman in a sable coat, a diplomat's wife, arrives at his cabin after a flirtation at dinner. ''So, no surprise, a few minutes after midnight: three taps, pearlescent fingernail on iron door and, when it opened, an eloquent Bonsoir.''

The latter is Alan Furst's kind of man.

Mr. Furst, the author of last year's ''Kingdom of Shadows'' and a string of alluring earlier espionage novels in a similar vein, seems to arrive effortlessly at such assurance. He glides gracefully into an urbane pre-World War II Europe and describes that milieu with superb precision. The wry, sexy melancholy of his observations would be seductive enough in its own right -- he is the Leonard Cohen of the spy genre -- even without the sharp political acuity that accompanies it. Of tensions between Stalin and Hitler, Mr. Furst's latest protagonist resignedly observes, ''Two gangsters, one neighborhood, they fight.''

One thing about Mr. Furst's diffident not-quite-heroes: they don't stay detached forever. In ''Blood of Victory,'' as in his earlier books, someone who had not planned to save the world finds himself gradually persuaded to try. In this case he is I. A. Serebin -- ''minor Russian writer, émgré'' by his own description -- who is inexorably drawn into action.

The process by which this happens is neatly analyzed by Marie-Galante, his lover, she of the pearlescent fingertips.

''First you say you'll pretend to do what they want, then you do what they want, then you're one of them,'' she says. ''Oldest story in the world: if you don't stand up to evil it eats you first and kills you later, but not soon enough.'' ''Blood of Victory'' begins atmospherically, as Mr. Furst's books always do. It's 1940: ''The beau monde of émigré Istanbul. Like a giant broom, the war had swept them all to the far edge of Europe.'' It is to Istanbul and to this company that Serebin is drawn for the sake of Tamara, an ailing former sweetheart, since he is deeply devoted to women. ''In this life, he thought, there is only one thing worth waking up for in the morning, and it isn't getting out of bed and facing the world.''

In Istanbul, staying at the Hotel Beyoglu near Taksim Square and visiting Tamara in Istiklal Caddesi -- because Mr. Furst loves beautiful, exotic words -- Serebin picks up intimations of the coming crisis. Among these: concern about the capture of Isaac Babel, the writer to whom Mr. Furst pays homage here through Serebin's work as an editor at a literary magazine.

Serebin, who has been living in Paris, is also executive secretary of the International Russian Union, and this organization draws him into intrigue. An explosion at the group's office has a powerful effect on him, since someone has deliberately summoned him just before the bomb goes off, intentionally saving his life.

Serebin begins to explore the delicate possibility of anti-Nazi activity. But he does this elliptically and indirectly, in much the same way that Mr. Furst tells his story. ''Obliquity -- the base element of a police state, learn it or die,'' Serebin thinks during one such conversation. Nothing about ''Blood of Victory'' is underscored or oversimplified, not even its title, which refers to the Romanian oil supply Serebin and comrades eventually try to sabotage. The phrase is borrowed from a French politician, one of many small details attesting to the prodigious historical research woven fascinatingly throughout Mr. Furst's storytelling.

Serebin becomes connected with the Hungarian Janos Polanyi, a former count who has figured in Mr. Furst's earlier work. (''Can one be a former count?'' Serebin asks. Polanyi replies, ''Oh, one can be anything.'') And he is sent to solicit help from a wealthy Russian arms dealer, a new baron with far-reaching connections and questionable loyalties.

The plot to disrupt Romanian oil transport along the Danube has its basis in real events and underscores Mr. Furst's view of espionage as inherently linked to business interests, governed by similar tactics and expediencies. ''Delay, temporize, misunderstand, deny, pull your hair out, declare bankruptcy, then run like hell,'' one powerful figure tells Serebin. ''After all, what makes you think that what works in business won't work in war?''

''Blood of Victory,'' with its intermittent glimpses of wartime violence and the climactic confrontation toward which it builds, has a more linear plot than ''Kingdom of Shadows'' did. But this book, too, is more concerned with nuances than action, and with an envelopingly murky vision of political realities.

''Fascism famously stomped around in jackboots, but sometimes it wore carpet slippers, padding about softly on the edges of one's life,'' Serebin thinks, ''and in a way that was worse.'' Surely it is also more subtle. And it suits the ultimate wisdom that is at the heart of Mr. Furst's vision. As he puts it in a three-word sigh of acknowledgment: ''So the world.''

Paperback editions of Mr. Furst's books are conveniently accompanied by questions to be raised by book groups -- fortunate book groups -- that read his work. For instance:

''How can you account for the fact that the settings seem authentic even though you probably have no firsthand knowledge of the times and places he writes about?''

''What becomes of Furst's heroes? Will they survive the war? Does Furst know what becomes of them? Would it be better if they were somewhere safe and sound, to live out the war in comfort?''

''Furst is often praised for his minor characters, which have been described as 'sketched out in a few strokes.' Do you have a favorite in this book?''

''Furst's novels have been described as 'historical novels,' and as 'spy novels.' He calls them 'historical spy novels.' Some critics have insisted that they are, simply, novels. If you owned a bookstore, in what section would you display his books?''

Never mind answers. Those questions themselves define what is most inviting about these novels. And as for where they belong in bookstores, that's easy. Up front.